Endless Games

(Free Article)

“This makes me think, Shiv. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced an awakening experience per se, but the sensation that I am almost 35 years old and that I have not been successful in a lot of areas in my life weighs down on me. Perhaps it is not that I have failed, but that I have been pointing at the wrong target. Perhaps I am exactly where I need to be, and I haven’t realized it.”

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My late aunt told me a story when I was a teenager. There was once a village of miserable people. Each villager complained incessantly about their own lot in life. They lamented about the many problems they had when compared to their neighbors. They envied one another for what the other had that they themselves lacked. Some moaned about not being married and having a family. Others complained about being poor and not having as much money as others around them. Still others complained about how clever people seemed to be when compared to them. So, this was indeed a very miserable village filled with envy, mistrust, gossip and regret.

One day a traveler happened to be passing through the village and decided to break journey for the evening and took up lodgings in the village inn. That evening as he sat drinking ale, he overheard the conversations of many of the village folk – conversations that were filled with gossip, rumormongering, back-biting, and jealousy. So, he asked a few of the villagers about their troubles. They were more than delighted to indulge in their tales of woe and misery – each one attempting to outdo the other in how bad a hand of cards life had dealt them.

Now, the traveler happened to be a shaman and a magician. He asked the villagers if they would willingly trade in their own life circumstances for the circumstances of others if they could choose what kind of life they could pick. The villagers said that they would do so without hesitation. Any life would be better than the suffering of their own personal situations. The traveler asked each villager to write the story of their lives on a white bedsheet and bring it to him the next morning.

The next day every person in the village did as they had been told, until there lay a huge mountain of white bedsheets piled in the center of the village square. The traveler then took the sheets and washed each gently in the river being careful not to lose the writing on the sheets. He then hung them up on clotheslines to dry in the warm sun and summer breeze. Finally, when the sheets had dried, he blindfolded each villager and asked them to touch and feel each bedsheet on the clothesline before picking one for themselves. The one they picked would become the circumstances of their new lives.

The villagers became excited at the prospect of new and improved beginnings. They took their time touching, feeling, smelling and wrapping themselves in each sheet to see how it would fit. After many hours, each of the still blindfolded villagers was holding a bedsheet excited to take their blindfolds off and see what life they had picked. At the traveler’s signal, the villagers undid their blindfolds and looked down at their sheets in astonishment.

Every single one of them had picked the life they already had.

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When we talk about ‘success’ and ‘failure’, the question we must ask is “what is the definition of success and failure. In comparison to what or whom do we measure it?"

There are no absolutes in the world. Even clock time is measured according to an arbitrary length of time we have decided to call a ‘second’. When someone says they will be “five minutes late” they mean they will be delayed by 300 multiples of that arbitrary length of time we have decided to call a second. But unless you define what a second is – time becomes a philosophical concept rather than a practical one.

So, this feeling of ‘not being successful’ is likely the result of some similar measurement you are making in your mind, whether consciously or unconsciously. Just like the ‘second’ is the basis of time measurement. Perhaps there is a metric of success that you are basing your self-critique on.

Perhaps you glance around you and see other 30/40-year-olds who are in committed relationships, married, raising families even. Perhaps they are running successful businesses or climbing the career ladder or following their own passions. Perhaps, they are homeowners with beautiful homes, nice cars, fashionable clothes. Perhaps they take vacations to exotic places without having to thrift on expenses. Perhaps they are already investing wisely for the future and appear to have a strong head on their shoulders in practical matters. Perhaps, they seem driven, purposeful, fulfilled, engaged, loved and happy.

Perhaps, you are none of those. Or just a few of those. But not most of those.  

Perhaps what you feel is happy at times but also depressed at times. Perhaps you feel engaged at times but also listless at times. Perhaps you feel worthy at times but also unworthy at times. Perhaps you feel confused most of the time and a sense of purpose features only intermittently. Perhaps your moments of fulfilment are sparsely scattered amongst what feels like long periods of dissatisfaction. Perhaps joy is a ray of sunlight that rarely breaks through the mostly overcast skies of your life.

And perhaps, it is based on the cumulative effect of all these imagined ‘perhapses’ that you feel like you are failing at life.

But perhaps, you are wrong.

Perhaps, success and failure are not a matter of fact but of perspective.

The last year was a difficult one for me. I felt like a failure quite often. I know this may come as a surprise to some since my writing often conveys a wisdom and certitude that appears to have transcended such petty feelings. But the truth is no matter how clear one’s spiritual vision, the flushing out of our deeply ingrained human conditioning - the insecurities, inferiorities, fears, feelings of lack and limiting beliefs around unworthiness or incapability - is the work of a lifetime. It doesn’t seem to add up only because there are so many hidden variables in the equation we do not see – that only become revealed over time.

I woke up at 2am two nights ago exhausted by jet lag and was gripped by an intense feeling of doom and despair at the trajectory my life has taken. For over an hour, my mind was plagued by relentless fears and anxieties, feelings of hopelessness and desolation, an overwhelming sense that I had no clue what I was doing anymore and did not have any idea how to move forward in my life. This continued until I passed out from the fatigue.

Last night I woke up, still jetlagged, at 2 am again. And again, my mind embarked on its odyssey of misery-making. But this time I felt intensely aware of my own presence underlying the mental ruminations. And as I turned my attention towards it, the feeling of presence grew more spacious until it filled the entire room. Meanwhile, my mind kept yammering away like a noisy radio in the background, spewing anxiety after anxiety – yet it appeared to be happening far away in the distance.

In that presence, I deeply felt that everything was right as it needed to be. Not because my circumstances were perfect. But because perfection lay not in what happens but in the happening itself. The place from which all rising and falling is seen as an endless ebb and flow of the tides of life. Where all notions of success and failure are merely the crests of troughs of infinite waves on an endless expanse of existence.

For one who is surfing, riding the crests is the point, whereas crashing into the troughs is to be avoided. But for the one sitting on the beach, the beauty lies in the entire lifecycle of each wave. For without the troughs, the crests have no meaning. And the greater the crest, the deeper the trough that inevitably follows. This immutable law is utterly self-evident to the observer on the beach.

This is not to say one must remain seated on the beach of life and refuse the thrill of surfing the waves. Only that when the day of surfing is done, one may look at the ocean with reverence and humility and appreciation for the endless games it allows us to play.

Lives that appear to contain great successes also carry within them colossal failures that are not always evident to others. Those who appear driven and purposeful spend countless secret hours wallowing in self-doubt. Those who appear wealthy and financially secure often lose nights of sleep anxious about debts and losses.  Those who seem adventurous and passionate are particularly prone to experiencing hours and hours of boredom and drudgery. Those whose lives appear filled with loving relationships, spouses and children frequently experience a sense of loss of personal autonomy – so entwined are they in the demands of the various roles they fulfill.  

In short, everyone around you is inevitably in the same boat as you are. They also feel happy at times but also depressed at times. They also feel engaged at times but also listless at times. They also feel worthy at times but also unworthy at times. They also feel confused most of the time with a sense of purpose featuring intermittently. They also feel moments of fulfilment sparsely scattered amongst long periods of dissatisfaction. Joy is a ray of sunlight that also only sometimes breaks through the overcast skies of their lives.

We all have the same ingredients. Perhaps, in slightly different proportions – but in essence not all that different. This is why spiritual truths are so universally applicable. Because they address the universal phenomenon that is THE HUMAN CONDITION.

What you have articulated in your query is the definition of Buddha’s teaching of dukkha. Dissatisfaction. Confusion. Listlessness. Unease.

And one does not address dukkha by transcending it. One does not cure dissatisfaction by becoming satisfied. One does not remove confusion by becoming clear. One does not eradicate listlessness by becoming purposeful. One does not eliminate uneasiness by becoming equanimous.

That is the lie all 8 billion of us are telling each other when we portray a one-sided version of reality to one another. All the while silently suffering our own lacks in secrecy.

Dukkha is addressed through acceptance. Not an enforced acceptance but one which naturally dawns with the realization that all is impermanent. All is rising and falling endlessly. Failure is the seed of success. And success is the seed of failure.

It is never ending. Always changing. And this never truly changes.

When you observe the world in this way. When you observe your life in this way. Not as an isolated point in time, but as a continuum of endless successes and failures, of loves and losses, of joys and sorrows – such a perspective may evoke a sense of beauty, of gratitude and of perfection.

That is what I found myself immersed in last night as I lay awake in the middle of the night staring up at the ceiling. I felt bathed in an overwhelming appreciation for my own imperfect humanity – one that can so easily become a story of personal woe but is really a universal condition.

And as my eyes welled with tears, I marveled at the miracle of being present to bear witness to it all.